Earnings by occupation in 1998

Mean hourly earnings of workers in executive, administrative, and managerial positions were $28.63 in 1998, compared with $7.85 for those in service occupations.

The second-highest paid occupation in 1998 was professional specialty and technical, with an average of $23.63 per hour. The second-lowest was handlers, equipment cleaners, helpers, and laborers, with mean hourly earnings of $9.52. In the remaining occupations, hourly earnings averaged between $10 and $20.

These data are from the BLS National Compensation Survey program. In this article, earnings are the straight-time hourly wages or salaries paid to employees in private industry. The mean is computed by totaling the pay of all workers and dividing by the number of workers, weighted by hours. Learn more in "National Compensation Survey: Occupational Wages in the United States, 1998," BLS Bulletin 2529 (PDF 649K).

Self-employment in the United States
Trends in self-employment by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, including both the unincorporated and the incorporated self-employed, as well as data on paid employees who work for the self-employed.